The Disloyal Opposition and the Fall of the Republic

The role of the Greek Cypriot opposition in the attempts to murder Archbishop Makarios and overthrow his government is not widely appreciated. Most histories treat this militant group as wayward patriots, holdovers from the glory days of EOKA and the struggle for self-determination. Here, the Greek Cypriot scholar Kyriacos Markides, for many years a professor at the University of Maine in the United States, delves much deeper into the ideology and sociology of the militants organized by Grivas and others. It is a fascinating and brilliantly woven story, excerpted from his 1977 classic, The Rise and Fall of the Cyprus Republic.

Opposition to Makarios sprang up with the beginning of independence as a form of protest against the Zurich and London agreements. It grew in intensity, though not in numerical strength, as the sentiment for Enosis dropped because it became increasingly remote. That the appeal of Enosis declined during independence is a fact that not even its most committed believers would dispute. The self-sacrificial nationalism of the 1950s was markedly absent in post-colonial Cyprus even among the members of EOKA B, the new terrorist organization that helped topple Makarios. Makarios's continued popularity and power and the failure of the enosist opposition to capture a single seat in Parliament at the 1970 parliamentary elections proved that the majority of Greek Cypriots had lost their enthusiasm for union with Mother Greece. As early as 1965 a public opinion poll showed that most Cypriots opted for continued independence. Of the 500 respondents only 18 percent considered Enosis a practical solution. [footnote 1]

The apparent reason for this change of mood was the constant fear of Turkish invasion. The repeated threats of invasion by Turkey, coupled with Greece's demonstrated inability to cope effectively with them, had a sobering and disillusioning effect on the Greek Cypriot majority. The 1967 military take-over in Greece did not restore the Cypriots' trust and affection toward the mother country. On the contrary, it exacerbated the already strained relations between the two countries.

In addition to these external factors, there were certain latent sociological factors that were at work in undermining the social base from which Enosis drew its support. It was the combination of these sociological variables with the ever present possibility of a Turkish invasion that transformed the attitudes of the population vis-a-vis Enosis.

Independence contributed to the emergence of a political infrastructure, albeit a fragile one. Through the government bureaucracy and the emerging political parties, new secular elites emerged and competed for political power. In the past, when the only political issue was Enosis, the church was the virtual political spokes man of Greek Cypriots, for there were no other groups -- except the Communists -- stable enough to provide political leadership. The groups and individuals that emerged during the colonial interlude found in Enosis the main channel for expressing their newly acquired political consciousness in the absence of a differentiated and institutionalized political infrastructure which could have provided a multiplicity of choices of political goals.

Independence permitted the development of political organizations that could channel the variety of political interests which formerly were suppressed because of the nationalist struggle. Groups emerged whose interests coincided with the continuation of Cypriot independence rather than union with Greece. Furthermore, groups such as the Communists that were not able actively to oppose Enosis became strong supporters of independence. Independence, in short, provided an opportunity for the expression of conflicting interests that formerly were not voiced. It was for this reason that in the 1940s and 1950s the church was adamant in refusing to accept self- rule as a temporary solution. The church perceived that self-rule meant the creation of political institutions that inevitably would have undermined the Enosis cause and, by extension, the authority of the church itself.

Moreover, greater contact with Greece after independence erased the illusory views entertained by many former ardent enosists vis- a-vis the motherland. Although mainland Greeks and Greek Cypriots shared the same culture, the structure of their societies and their political and economic institutions were diametrically different and often contradictory. Cyprus was spared the various historical convulsions that plagued Greece during the twentieth century and obstructed the normal evolution of Greek society. It was spared the two world wars, the Asia Minor disaster of 1922, and the bloody Greek civil war of the 1940s. The Cypriots were able to develop their social and economic institutions relatively unhampered. The absence of reactionary military movements (with the exception of EOKA) and dictatorships, a recurrent feature of Greek politics, allowed the Cypriots to develop their trade unions, their cooperatives, and a viable merchant class, which after independence contributed significantly to the high standard of living. Furthermore, in Cyprus a dynamic leftist party was allowed to grow unchecked, whereas in Greece the Left was severely suppressed and the party was forced underground. Fears arose that the union of the two countries would have adverse consequences for the Greek Cypriots and might reduce Cyprus to the status of another remote and neglected province of Greece. The constant maneuvering on the part of the various Greek governments to solve the problem in direct discussions with Turkey without the participation of the Cypriots increased these suspicions.

The accelerated economic growth that followed independence must also be considered for a fuller understanding of the decline of Enosis. During the first ten-year period of independence (1960- 70) the per capita GNP reached an average annual rate of increase of about 7 percent at constant 1958 prices. In actual figures, the per capita GNP almost doubled during this period. Thus, while in 1958 per capita income was estimated to be ,181 Cypriot (about $2.60 per pound), by 1970 the figure was ,302, at constant 1958 prices. In 1973, per capita income reached a high of ,400.2 at constant 1967 prices. With a booming economy there was virtually no unemployment, which reached a low of 0.9 percent in 1972.[2]

The rise in incomes during the postcolonial years led to an incessant and uncontrolled drive for consumption, particularly of durable goods like automobiles. For example, in 1964 there were 25,626 private automobiles in Cyprus, or 22.9 persons per auto- mobile. By 1973 there were 74,698 privately owned automobiles, or 8.5 persons per automobile. Thus Cyprus had one of the smallest population-to-vehicles ratios in the world. [3] A further indication of the rapid transformation of Cypriot society was the tremendous growth of the mass media, such as television, radios, telephones, and newspapers. [4]  All of these are secularizing agents. They break down the insulation of the society from the outside world and accelerate the decline and debunking of cherished traditional values and ideologies. Independence speeded up the process of secularization and modernization, which began in the very year the British set foot on the island at the end of the nineteenth century.

The remaining protagonists of Enosis failed to adapt to these major transformations of Cypriot society. They continued to project Enosis as the traditional nationalist movement par excellence, at a time when such notions were becoming increasingly discredited in the eyes of the Greek Cypriot population. The ideology of the movement was totally at odds with the underlying social realities in terms both of the attitudes of the general population and the structure of society. Thus we may conclude that a traditionally rooted movement like Enosis cannot maintain its mass appeal if its ideological content remains intransigent and inflexible at a time when the underlying sociocultural environment undergoes profound secularizing and modernizing changes. Social movements are integral parts of the general society, and any major transformation of the underlying social structure is likely to have an impact on the nature of these movements. Likewise, a major social movement may unleash forces in the environment that alter its underlying social base, which in turn alters the fate of the movement. There is a continuous interplay between the evolution of a given society and the rise and decline of social movements within it. Social movements therefore ought to be seen in relation to the underlying social-structural changes and conditions.[5]

Enosis provides a good example of the interplay between a social movement and society that may initiate radical transformations. With the mass disenchantment with traditional ideologies, a disloyal opposition of enosists emerged which, in spite of its lack of a solid social foundation and in spite of Makarios's immense power and popularity, managed to bring about the downfall of the Cypriot state. The enosists were able to do this because they allied themselves with an external force, the Greek junta, at a time when the internal base upon which Enosis had thrived over the decades had all but vanished.

Emergence of a Disloyal Opposition

A disloyal opposition in a democracy is one that wishes to abolish the constitutional system, to do away with competitive politics between parties, and to eliminate the civil liberties required to maintain that competition.[6]  In Cyprus the men who took power on July 15, 1974, with the aid of Greek officers, were members of a disloyal opposition as so defined. But the nature of the disloyal opposition changed over the fourteen-year period of independence. It began as a democratic protest against the Zurich and London agreements of 1959 that set Cyprus on the path to independence. However, over the years the opposition became more and more militant, more and more "disloyal," until it was dominated by extremist factions that were ready to use any means to destroy the republic. To strong sup- porters of Enosis, Cyprus was not a legitimate nation; they refused to recognize the legitimacy of any government for which Enosis was not the central political goal.

These fanatic enosists felt that the cause of Enosis had been betrayed and that the man solely responsible for this treachery was Makarios. Oddly enough these enosists aligned themselves at first with the Communists and the moderate leftists to oppose Makarios in the first presidential elections in 1959. The Communists opposed the agreements for different reasons. They felt excluded from political participation, as the Patriotic Front, the ad hoc political formation for the election of Makarios, methodically kept them outside the mainstream of politics.

The person who temporarily unified these two opposition groups, the extreme Right and the communist Left, was the aging politician John Clerides, father of Glafkos Clerides, Speaker of the House. John Clerides was a respected and moderate politician. He was once accused by the right wing of being a "traitor" because he suggested in the late 1940s that the Greeks should accept a proposal by the British government to establish a constitutional system that would have provided substantial local autonomy. But in 1959 Clerides denounced the Zurich and London agreements as unworkable; the sole basis of his presidential campaign was condemnation of the agreements. Makarios won the election by a substantial majority of over 65 percent of the votes. John Clerides died a few months later.

Immediately after the election, Makarios proceeded to co-opt the Communists. First, he restored the legality of AKEL, which the British had banned during the 1950s. Second, he made a "deal" with the Akelists by offering them 5 seats in Parliament out of the total 35 occupied by the Greek Cypriots: the other 15 seats were held by the Turkish Cypriots. Thus, Makarios brought to his side the strongest party on the island. The Communists supported Makarios for two reasons. First, they preferred independence to union with Greece, where the Communist party was outlawed. Second, to pro-Soviet, pro-Arab AKEL, Enosis would have also implied the NATO-ization of Cyprus. For these reasons the Communists increasingly became Makarios's most enthusiastic supporters.

This development, however, embittered and alienated the enosists, so much so that some of them accused Makarios of being a secret supporter of communism and atheism. Makarios's accommodation with the Communists was a clever move on his part to widen his base of support, but at the same time it stimulated stronger opposition from the extreme right wing, which increasingly evolved into a highly antidemocratic force.

In the latter part of the 1960s the enosists were organized into a political party, the DEK, Demokratikon Ethnikon Komma (Democratic National party). Dr. Takis Evdokas, a psychiatrist trained in Athens and New York, became its head. Evdokas began publishing a weekly paper, Gnomi (Opinion), that sharply criticized the government's policies and advocated Enosis as the only guarantee against communism. If we compare Evdokas with the subsequent leaders of the opposition, he appears moderate. The avowed purpose of Gnomi was to attack Makarios's one upmanship and contribute toward maintenance of an open forum for the free expression of opinion. But Evdokas's uncritical acceptance of what seemed to be an unrealistic advocacy of Enosis alienated him from moderate critics of the government. The moderates might have formed the basis of a loyal opposition (which did not develop in Cyprus) if the increasing political polarization had left room for one to develop. The presidential election of 1968 exposed the weakness of the opposition when Evdokas, as head of DEK, gained only 2 percent of the vote against Makarios's 98 percent.

Evdokas was committed to a democratic confrontation with the government through "dialogue," in spite of the fact that the ultimate goal of the opposition was the abolition of Cyprus's independence. This contradiction left Evdokas with a constituency of right-wing extremists who eventually forced him out of politics, replacing the leadership of the Right with antidemocratic militants. The displacement of Evdokas as head of the opposition coincided with the clandestine return of Grivas to Cyprus in 1971 after he "escaped" from house arrest in Athens.

Grivas, it will be remembered, was the guerrilla leader who led the struggle against England during the 1950s. He left Cyprus in 1959 soon after the Zurich and London agreements were signed, after being persuaded that his departure would facilitate the creation of an independent republic, which would be the first step toward Enosis. Soon after his arrival in Athens, however, he denounced the agreements and accused the archbishop and the Greek government led by Constantine Karamanlis of cheating him by misrepresenting the true nature of the agreed-upon constitution. A relentless and bitter struggle emerged between Makarios and Grivas, the two former leaders of the Enosis movement. But when intercommunal fighting between Greeks and Turks broke out in December 1963, the Greek government sent Grivas back to Cyprus to head the newly formed Greek Cypriot National Guard. His presence was considered "indispensable" for the defense of the island because he had the prestige and authority to control the irregular Greek Cypriot forces, which were creating havoc for the government by their terrorist acts. At the same time, his presence in Cyprus offered the Greek government power over the independent-minded archbishop.[7]

With the aid of the Greek military, Grivas set up a well-disciplined National Guard, an institution totally at odds with the Cyprus government over the issue of Enosis. Grivas remained to his death a fanatical zealot of Enosis and was prepared to torpedo any effort on the part of Makarios to reach an accommodation with the Turks that excluded Enosis.

By 1969, a year after Evdokas was defeated at the polls, there appeared several terrorist organizations claiming leadership of the enosist struggle. They included the following: (a) the National Front; (b) the Organization Akritas; (c) the Enosist Youth Phinix; (d) the Nationalist Youth of Paphos; and (e) the Organization of National Salvation.[8] The most lethal of these guerrilla organizations were the National Front and Akritas. The mood of these groups was expressed in the following quotation from one of their proclamations:

We can no longer close our eyes and allow our nation to be led treacherously by antienosists toward illegitimate solutions. With every means, everywhere and always, we shall struggle against them. Against the traitors, the leftists, and their sympathizers. And we shall hit the government itself. Whoever doesn't conform will be publicly executed. It is the only solution for getting rid of the Communists and their treacherous role in undermining the national ideals. The past of our nation dictates the undertaking of a struggle for its future. . . . Only then will there be a national renaissance in Cyprus.[9]

These were not idle threats. Between 1969 and 1971, the year Grivas secretly returned to the island, these organizations were credited with many bombings and several murders, including the attempts against Makarios's life in 1970.= [10]   Grivas returned to Cyprus in the midst of increasing opposition to Makarios by the various terrorist groups. He organized a new underground organization, EOKA B, to fight once again for Enosis.

A more militant political organization appeared that claimed to be above politics - the ESEA, Eniaios Syndesmos Enotikou Agonos (Unified Committee of the Enosist Struggle). It was the political front of EOKA B. Three new enosist newspapers - the Ethniki, Messivrini, and Patris - were established. It was common knowledge that these newspapers, as well as EOKA B and ESEA, were financed by the Greek government and by some of its wealthy supporters. Captured documents found in the hands of EOKA B offered ample evidence to prove this allegation.

ESEA, through these newspapers, openly and with impunity, encouraged terrorist violence as a means of promoting the cause of Enosis. For example, three months before the coup the newspaper Ethniki in a major article entitled "Long Live EOKA B" wrote:

[EOKA) . . . was established in order to offer protection to the constantly harassed enosists and to prevent a new national betrayal against Greek Cyprus. Today's EOKA is the continuation and extension of the EOKA of 1955-1959. It is a continuation of the struggle for Enosis which was left half-finished by the national traitors. [11]

In another article the opposition virtually urged the National Guard to take over the government:

We must stop allowing the traitors to continue their nationally corrosive policies. The Greek officers and our National Guard have a sacred mission. The Communists and the priests must not be allowed to destroy it. Greece should no longer tolerate any more humiliations from the traitors in Nicosia. There is no chance that they will come to their senses. Measures must be taken without delay so that they may become politically harmless. . . . We responsibly state that the theocratic establishment will eventually collapse. . . . The enosists can neither be defeated, nor dismantled. For they embody the conscience and the will of the nation ! [12]

After Grivas took over the underground forces he remained in hiding, and terrorism continued even more intensely. At the same time the government created an auxiliary police force, the Tactical Reserve Force, for the specific purpose of combating terrorism. It was allegedly Grivas's intention eventually to come out of his underground hiding and confront Makarios at the polls. According to his close collaborators, he was concerned about the possibility of a bloody civil war, which he wanted to avoid. When he came to Cyprus in 1971, the Tactical Reserve Force had not yet been established. Grivas thought at the time that the defeat of Makarios would be relatively easy and could be carried out without much bloodshed. But by 1974 Makarios had at his disposal over 700 well-armed and dedicated men. According to some of his close friends, Grivas became increasingly disillusioned with the Greek colonels because of their readiness to risk an all-out civil war in order to implement their plans. Although Grivas was a nationalist extremist himself, he was also a Cypriot, and many of Makarios's supporters were his former close associates during the guerrilla war against the British. Thus he was ambivalent and reluctant to confront Makarios more dynamically through an all-out civil war. Actually Grivas's main objective was to prevent Makarios from reaching an agreement with the Turks that would have blocked the realization of Enosis forever.

Grivas died in hiding in late January 1974. Before he died, he designated as his successor George Karousos, a Greek officer who shared his beliefs. But the extremist factions in the guerrilla movement opposed Karousos, who represented a moderate force, and pressed for increased guerrilla activities. The man behind the extremist faction was Dimitrios Ioannides, the junta strongman, who controlled the guerrilla operations from Athens. He ordered the kidnaping of Karousos'[13] and his replacement by the hardliners. Karousos was sent back to Greece and kept under house arrest. Thus the enosist opposition, led at first by the moderate John Clerides and later by the psychiatrist Evdokas, fell increasingly into the hands of factions that were even more extremist than Grivas himself.

The Social Basis of The Disloyal Opposition

In periods of extreme crises that precede the breakdown of democratic governments, segments of the society that are threatened by changes in the social environment affecting status, power, or economic position serve as sources of support for the disloyal opposition that is trying to destroy the constitutional order. These are the "crisis strata.@[14] Although not sufficient as a cause of constitutional breakdowns, the crisis strata are nevertheless thought to be necessary factors. This hypothesis is not totally supported by the Cyprus case. There were no crisis strata in Cyprus that were imminently threatened by social change. Support for the Makarios government came from all segments of the population, except of course the Turks. All groups supported Makarios; opposition came from certain minorities or individuals within some of these groups. Under normal circumstances these minorities could hardly have posed a threat to the constitutional order. They did pose a threat because they were activated and organized by forces outside the society. In other words, internal conditions giving rise to discontent do not have to be as intense when an external force or forces are of paramount importance, as clearly was the case with Cyprus. Yet the concept of "crisis strata" is useful in understanding the nature of the minorities within the various categories and groupings that generally supported the government, and the explanatory strength of the concept would increase if we modified it to account for situations like that of Cyprus. The breakdown of a constitutional government, such as that of Cyprus, which is essentially based on wide popular support, is the result of the collusion of external forces with members of what may be called the "quasi-crisis strata." These are the strata from which a minority of malcontents either join other disloyal forces for the overthrow of the legitimate order or serve as relentless critics of it, thus creating the moral and psychological atmosphere that gives support to the more fanatical and daring elements. The strata from which the discontented are drawn are those that would probably evolve into full-fledged crisis strata if changes in the society were perceived by the majority within these groups and categories as threatening. The concept of "quasi-crisis strata" is also useful in predicting possible future sources of massive antiregime opposition.

In Cyprus the following could be identified as the quasi-crisis strata from which individuals emerged who formed the social basis of the disloyal opposition: (1) some former participants in the guerrilla war against the British; (2) some traditional intellectuals such as philologists, theologians, lawyers trained in Greece, as well as new graduates from Greek universities; (3) some businessmen and professionals; (4) the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus.

Heroes   One of the most difficult tasks that confronted Makarios from the beginning of independence was controlling the various EOKA guerrillas who participated in the anti-British campaign, a problem characteristic of postrevolutionary periods. As the heroes of the "revolution" and the architects of the new political order, many of them pressed for special privileges in the form of high government positions or jobs in the civil service commensurate with their rank in the underground. Leading members of EOKA usually aspired to ministerial positions or their equivalent. Dissatisfaction and frustration on the part of this segment of the population would have spelled serious trouble for the government and obstructed the implementation of the fragile agreements that launched Cypriot in- dependence. The problem of appeasing EOKA members was all the more urgent as the goal for which the guerrillas fought was not in- dependence but union with Greece. Thus the legitimacy they accorded to the new state was tentative at most. Had their mythical leader Dighenis (Grivas's pseudonym) opposed the agreements from the very beginning, refused to leave Cyprus, and continued the armed struggle for Enosis, probably few, if any, would have disobeyed his orders. In 1959 the situation in Cyprus between Greeks and Turks was so bad that Makarios was able to convince Grivas that the British would partition Cyprus if the armed struggle continued.

Before his departure from the island in 1959, Grivas met secretly with his various sector chiefs and group leaders in Nicosia, most of whom saw Grivas for the first time; he tearfully embraced and kissed each one of them and filled them with paternal admonitions on the virtues of unity and obedience. He urged that they maintain vigilance, remain faithful to the ultimate dream of Enosis, and rally behind the Ethnarch in this new phase of the struggle. But a few months after his arrival in Athens, as we noted above, Grivas denounced the agreements and blamed Makarios for tricking him by allegedly not revealing important clauses of the new constitution, such as the one formally banning Enosis forever. From then on until his death in 1974, Grivas remained one of Makarios's most bitter adversaries.

Makarios and Grivas were two diametrically contradictory personalities whom historical fate brought together to lead the anti- colonialist movement. The first was a religious functionary with an aversion for violence and a penchant for smooth diplomacy. The second was a militarist, steeped in violence and terror, whose notoriety began with the Greek civil war in the middle 1940s when he headed the terrorist paramilitary organization X (whose main aim was to hunt down and assassinate leftists and Communists in the Athens area).

Grivas was a native Cypriot born in Trikomo, a village near Famagusta, in 1897. After graduating from the gymnasium, he migrated to Greece and entered the military academy to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a soldier. The conspiratorial committee that was formed in Greece in the late 1940s to promote an armed rebellion in Cyprus for union with Greece chose Grivas as the man to lead the struggle. In his memoirs Grivas condemned Makarios for his reluctance to give support to a violent rebellion. Declaring that in the event of a guerrilla campaign "not even fifty men will follow you," Makarios, according to Grivas, opposed a "dynamic" solution to the problem. Grivas's feelings were shared by the then archbishop of Greece, Spyridon, a member of the conspiratorial committee, who characteristically stated that "freedom cannot be won without bloodshed."

Makarios sent a message to Athens in June 1953 in which he asked Grivas to send ammunition to Cyprus for use in sabotage, "but no guns or pistols." It was ostensibly Makarios's belief that the British would abandon Cyprus in "three to four months" after a few harmless explosions. After further pressure from Athens and the failure of the British to yield, Makarios permitted Grivas to lead an armed struggle.' [15] Grivas subsequently established himself as the undisputed lord of the political underworld, all too ready to order the assassination of those who stood in his way on the road to the millennium.

Grivas the military terrorist had little in common with Makarios the churchman whose preference for pacifist, diplomatic methods in the pursuit of political goals annoyed and exasperated Grivas and his ardent supporters. In the middle of the terrorist campaign to overthrow him in 1971, Makarios unveiled a statue of Gandhi in the central park of Nicosia, a move that brought sharp, sarcastic comments from the opposition press, which criticized him for ignoring the many heroes of EOKA and for preferring to erect a statue of a "pacifist foreigner." During the same period Makarios published a monograph entitled The Island of the Saints, which contained the biographies of a number of native holy men. As head of state, Makarios never signed an execution order for any man regardless of his crime. In one instance, when a murderer convicted in a non- political case was scheduled to be executed on a day that Makarios happened to be overseas, the defense lawyer managed to postpone the execution until Makarios returned. Then, as expected, Makarios signed the pardon. For political crimes there was hardly any punishment, a situation that to some extent encouraged disloyalty and terrorism.

After the departure of Grivas from Cyprus in 1959, Makarios directed his attention to winning over to his side the agonistes, that is, the ex-EOKA guerrillas. With initial backing by Grivas, Makarios proceeded to organize and unify them in one organization, the EDMA, Eniaion Demokratikon Metopon Agoniston (Unified Democratic Front of Agonistes) which he indirectly controlled. But Grivas's denouncement of the agreements from Athens a few months later brought about the disintegration of EDMA. Grivas secretly urged his most trusted comrades to dissolve EDMA. With backing from Athens, a small but decisive nucleus of anti-Makarios, pro- Grivas forces emerged.

The great majority of the agonistes remained tentatively committed to the preservation of the independence of Cyprus. Makarios, through a partially successful method of co-optation, managed to bring most of the EOKA chiefs over to his side, at least during the crucial period of the formation of the new state. Thus, before Grivas denounced the agreements and embarked on a new enosist adventure, Makarios had already formed his first cabinet, which included several leading EOKA chiefs or persons intimately connected with the underground. All of them were in their middle twenties, a factor that led to bitter criticism of Makarios by veteran politicians who felt displaced. For example, the late mayor of Nicosia, Themistocles Dhervis, accused Makarios of preferring ta kopellouthkia (the kids) so that he could do whatever he wished with them. With his powerful pen and eloquent mastery of the written word, he did much during the early 1960s to enhance the platform upon which the disloyal opposition sustained itself through the years and thus paved the way for the fanatics who took over in the 1970s.

By far the most controversial and crucial appointment was that of Polykarpos Georkajis as the republic's first minister of the interior. Georkajis was one of the key hardcore EOKA chiefs. He gained popularity in guerrilla circles after several successful escapes from British jails, which earned him the reputation of AHoudini of Cyprus.@ Makarios allegedly appointed Georkajis because he was in a position to influence and control the various ex-EOKA guerrillas who were a potential threat to the state. And so he did. Georkajis was elected president of EAL, Enosis Agoniston Lefkosias (Union of Nicosia Fighters), the biggest and most important organization of former EOKA members. As head of EAL and minister of the interior, he became the strongest man in Cyprus, so much so that in the end he posed a major threat to Makarios himself. But in the meantime Georkajis, an early convert to the idea of an independent Cyprus, lured potential support away from Grivas to Makarios. In the process of doing so, he became a leader himself with substantial popular support.

Georkajis's rise to power caused embarrassment to Makarios, because as head of the Ministry of the Interior Georkajis often acted more like an EOKA sector chief than a minister of a democratic republic. The heavy-handed methods he frequently used to pressure opponents tainted the prestige of the security forces and under- mined the legitimacy of the administration. Many of the policemen who were hired after independence were former agonistes and comrades of Georkajis. Their educational background and experience in the underground were not the most appropriate qualifications for recruitment into the security forces. In addition, Georkajis organized a secret paramilitary force partly manned by former associates, including policemen.

Georkajis was not in complete control of all the paramilitary forces within the Greek community. His major opponent during the first three years of independence was Nicos Sampson, the ex-EOKA guerrilla who deposed Makarios in 1974. Sampson commanded his own private army, as we have seen, and competed for power with Georkajis. Their feud climaxed in 1962 when two members of Sampson's gang were gunned down in Famagusta by Georkajis's supporters. Although Georkajis was allegedly not involved in the killings, his failure to arrest and prosecute the killers offered propaganda ammunition to the opponents of the government. It was the intercommunal outbreak of violence in 1963 that temporarily unified the various factions.

Georkajis's power was enhanced by his increasing popularity, and his intimate associates confided that his ultimate ambition was to succeed Makarios as president.[16]   He skillfully cultivated his power and influence through traditional channels. Thus Georkajis was always available to baptize the child of an associate or a friend - he literally became the godfather of innumerable children - or to become a koumbaros, the best man in a wedding. Furthermore, Georkajis was always ready to do little favors here and there for friends and acquaintances. His unassuming, friendly personality and his genuine commitment to the welfare of his friends made them totally devoted to him.

The growing power of Georkajis and his readiness to use extra-legal means to attain his goals apparently worried Makarios, who occasionally summoned to his palace other former EOKA chiefs to ask advice on how to cope with the situation." The way out was offered by an unlikely source, the Athens junta. Papadopoulos, the Greek dictator, demanded publicly in 1969 that Makarios dismiss Georkajis from the cabinet because of his alleged involvement in an assassination plot to kill Papadopoulos. Justifying his request by pressure from Greece, Makarios promptly asked Georkajis to resign to prevent the deterioration of Cypriot-Greek diplomatic relations. Georkajis never recovered from this humiliation. His associates claimed that he felt betrayed by Makarios. Nevertheless, even out of office Georkajis continued to exert considerable influence within the Ministry of the Interior, to such an extent that it was not very clear who had greater authority - Georkajis or the newly appointed Epaminondas Komodromos, an aging lawyer of the Kykko monastery.

When Makarios's helicopter was shot down in March 1970, all fingers pointed at Georkajis. Georkajis's reaction was to rush to the airport to take a trip to Lebanon, because, he explained later, his life was in danger. But the police, ordered by Makarios, prevented his departure and Georkajis was put under house arrest. One week later, Georkajis was found murdered in his car in a remote field outside the village of Mia Milia. According to news reports he managed to escape one night from his house allegedly to meet "somebody" who would have been able to offer him information about the real assassins. The shock of his murder was compounded by Makarios's undiplomatic silence. Makarios, still shaken by his own near-miss assassination a week earlier, failed to condemn publicly the murder of Georkajis. Instead he reported in an interview that he had information concerning Georkajis's complicity in the assassination attempt against his own life. This infuriated Georkajis's many friends, who considered Makarios morally responsible for his death because he had prevented Georkajis's departure from Cyprus. It is important to note that neither the opposition nor Georkajis's supporters accused Makarios of any involvement in the assassination, an indication of Makarios's great popularity. The common belief was that Georkajis was murdered by agents of the Greek C.I.A. and more specifically by a Greek officer who was serving in Cyprus at the time. Since there were no prosecutions, it is still not clear who the murderers were.

After these events almost all of Georkajis's friends and supporters in and out of the government became prime suspects in conspiracies. Many defected from the progovernment camp to join the guerrillas, thus perilously strengthening the ranks of EOKA B. The defense of the republic's independence shifted to Vassos Lyssarides, the leftist head of the social democratic party (EDEK) and private physician to Makarios.

Georkajis's career typified the process by which many former guerrillas attained high social and political positions in the post-colonial era. The EOKA underground functioned as a vehicle for upward social mobility for many Cypriots from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Most of them, the sons of peasants like Georkajis, left their villages to search for employment or acquire a high school education in the cities.

The co-optation of these former guerrillas into the new administration prevented the emergence of a clear-cut polarization between the pro-Makarios forces on one hand and the ex-guerrillas on the other. The majority of the agonistes either sided with Makarios in the dispute or remained neutral. Thus, when Grivas returned secretly to Cyprus in 1971 to resume the fight for Enosis, few of his old associates were willing to follow him into the underground. By then most of the former guerrillas were close to middle age; professionally and economically they were fairly well established and had wives and children. They were no longer the "passionate youth" who had filled the ranks of the anticolonial guerrilla organization. Furthermore, many of them were part of the Makarios establishment or had links with it in one form or another.

Who then were the ex-EOKA guerrillas who collaborated with the other disloyal forces to overthrow the Makarios government? They were the guerrillas who for a variety of reasons were never co-opted into the Makarios administration and the supporters of Georkajis who defected to the disloyal opposition after Georkajis=s assassination in 1970. It was not possible for Makarios to offer positions in the new government to all the former guerrilla fighters. Some were inadvertently left out of the new order and turned against Makarios and Georkajis, while a few others were unwilling to be co-opted and remained, like Grivas, fanatically committed to the original goal of Enosis. Two prominent members of this category of "discontented elites"[18] were . . . [deleted for legal reasons].

The minority of pro-Grivas EOKA chiefs established their own associations . . . in the various towns and competed with the progovernment, pro-Georkajis organizations like the EAL. These pro-Grivas organizations were the legal fronts of illegal paramilitary groups.

Feuding among former EOKA chiefs was an important factor in the general decline of their popularity and status. In the early period of the republic's life, when memories of the anticolonialist campaign were still fresh, the agonistes were highly esteemed. At that time many who were actually at the periphery of the armed struggle were eager to acquire the label of agonistes and thus harvest some of the rewards, tangible and intangible, accorded to those qualified for the title. By 1970 the situation was markedly different. Most of the agonistes who continued making demands on the basis of their participation in the guerrilla struggle were looked upon more as undeserving rascals who had exploited their participation in the underground for personal advantage. The emerging new and more educated generation of Greek Cypriots was not willing to accord them the same prestige and esteem and did not consider them indispensable leaders of society. Yet some of the agonistes, like Nicos Sampson, still claimed leadership positions by virtue of their revolutionary roles.[20]

The decline of the prestige of the guerrilla fighters can be seen in a comparison of the composition of the first government in 1960 and that of 1970. The first government contained five ministers who were associated either with EOKA or the Enosis movement. In 1970 none of the ministers was a former member of EOKA.[21]   By 1972 when Makarios changed his cabinet, after pressures were exerted on him by the junta in Athens, none of the new ministers was a former member of EOKA or even active in the enosis movement. [22]

An incident that exemplified the displeasure of former guerrillas over their loss of status was the formal complaint by the Nicosia chapter of the EAL in 1969 that in the celebrations of the first of April, the day commemorating the EOKA uprising in 1955, the agonistes were ignored by the organizing committee and not invited to participate. Other organizations unrelated to the EOKA struggle, f they complained were the major participants in the celebrations.

The unacceptable posture of the organizing officials toward us in regard to the celebrations of the epic which we have created with our blood and sacrifices fill us with bitterness. The agonistes are not demanding adulations. Nor have they ever fought for them. At the same time they cannot tolerate being mocked by anybody particularly about a subject for which they have rights that have been earned with struggles and sacrifices.[23]

Most of the former guerrillas disengaged from politics. Many became successful members of the bourgeoisie, and their revolutionary identities were no longer of functional importance to their new positions in society. These men tried to avoid becoming tangled in the rift between Makarios and Grivas. Unlike other postcolonial societies, Cyprus had a flourishing economy, and many members of the anticolonialist movement went into business for themselves. Hence the demands and pressures exerted on the government by this segment of the population were much fewer than they would have been had the availability of careers outside the government been much more restricted.

However, a small minority of ex-guerrilla fighters clung tenaciously to the old symbols and identities of their revolutionary years. Their declining status, along with growing popular disrespect for the traditional symbols for which they fought and in which so much of their own self-worth was invested, only aggravated their resentment. Thus some were only too eager to join the disloyal forces in their disastrous course of steadily eroding the legitimacy of the republic. The disaffected Georkajis supporters either joined the opposition or were unavailable to come to the rescue of the republic during the critical years that lay ahead.

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